Briefings

The daily briefing is a short summary that Otis posts to Slack each morning. It shows a few key numbers for your project, and it features at most one problem, one piece of good news and one session worth reading.

This page explains what each part of the briefing is built from, so that you know what it does and doesn't cover.

Purpose of the briefing

The insight feed holds everything Otis has found. The briefing answers a narrower question: what is worth a minute of your attention today. It is short on purpose, and on a quiet day it is shorter still.

Briefing contents

A briefing arrives as up to four Slack messages, so that you can reply to each part separately.

A part is left out when Otis has nothing for it. If no part has content, Otis posts nothing that day.

The vitals

Every project starts with the same five numbers.

A number appears only when enough data is behind it.

Numbers that your team watches come before these five, and Slack shows the first five in the list. A project that watches several numbers therefore sees fewer of the defaults.

If your project's telemetry had events that failed to store in the last 24 hours, the vitals message says so, with the number of events dropped.

Understanding briefings

Otis chooses what goes into each part by the rules below. The last part of this section says what each part rests on, so that you know how far to rely on it.

The alarm and the upside

Otis considers the insights published since the previous briefing. It leaves out any that your team has resolved or archived, any that are stale, and any below your team's confidence setting.

It separates the remaining insights into problems and good news. An AI model, acting as an editor, then picks at most one alarm and at most one upside from the most important of each. It may pick neither, because a place in the briefing has to be earned.

The editor writes the title and the sentences for each part itself, from the insight. The button under each part opens the full insight, which is the checked version of the claim.

An insight normally appears in one briefing only. An insight that gets a new version counts as new and can appear again.

The story

Otis picks one session narrative from the last day. It prefers a session that went notably well or notably badly. The text is the user's own words when the narrative has a quote, and otherwise Otis's one-sentence assessment.

The user is described only by how long they have been using your product, such as "A user of 3+ weeks".

Sources for each part

• The vitals are computed, not written. Each number comes from a stored measurement, and the arrow compares the two most recent ones.
• The alarm and the upside each point to a published insight. That insight went through the checks described in Insights.
• The wording of those two parts is the editor's. For any figure you intend to act on, open the insight, which is the checked version of the claim.
• The story's quote comes from the stored narrative. It appears in quotation marks only when it is the user's own words.

Briefing delivery

Otis sends the briefing once a day, at about 7 a.m. in your project's time zone. The time zone is UTC until you set one. Otis sends a briefing only for a project that sent telemetry in the last 24 hours.

The briefing is delivered in Slack.

There are two kinds of briefing:

• The team briefing is posted to a Slack channel. By default it uses the channel that receives your insights.
• A personal briefing is sent to one member as a direct message. It draws on the same insights and sessions, and it leads with what that member has said they are focused on. Otis prepares one for a member who has told it their role or focus.

Setting up the briefing

• Connect Slack and choose a channel. In your project's settings, the Integrations tab has a switch for the team briefing and a choice of channel.
• Turn on your personal briefing. The same tab has a switch for briefings sent to you alone. You must also link your Slack account by running /otis signin in Slack.
• Set the time zone. It is on the General tab of your project's settings.
• Watch a number. Ask Otis in a chat in the Otis app to watch a measure, or star an insight about a tracked measure. The number is added to the vitals.

The project settings page, including the switch for a personal briefing, is available to project admins.

Your team's guidelines for tone, audience and focus apply to the briefing as well as to insights.

Reading a briefing

• A missing part means nothing qualified. A briefing with only vitals doesn't mean that nothing happened. It means no new insight met the bar.
• The arrows compare measurements, not days. Some vitals are measured daily, some weekly and some monthly. A weekly number shows a flat arrow until its next measurement.
• An insight published late appears the next day. Otis investigates in the early morning so that the day's insights are ready. One that finishes after the briefing goes into the following one.

Related

• Insights covers the findings that the alarm and the upside are drawn from.
• Sessions covers the narratives that the story is drawn from.
• Customization covers the settings that shape the briefing.